Recent contributions (Fowler, 1981:Levinson.1978) to devel-opmental psychology, focusing on the adult life cycle, suggest the existence of a transcendent dimension within human experience. This dimension is discovered in moments in which the individual questions the meaning of personal existence and attempts to place the self within a broader ontological context. This aspect of human experience, which may be discerned within the theoretical formulations of Allport (1950). Erikson (1950), Frankl (1969). Jung (1958) and May (1953). may be conceptualized as a spiritual dimension. American psychology has rarely focused its theoretical. re-search or clinical attention on religious experience or spiritu-ality. Malorty (1972) reported that l.l % of the American Psychological Association members which he sampled listed within their biographical data an interest in religion. The relative inattention to the religious or spiritual and the eschew-ing of study in this area may have its root in the historical precedents of the profession. In its urgency to dissociate itself from philosophy, to earn its credentials and respectability as an empirical science as opposed to a speculative discipline, the dimension of spirituality was ushered out of the legitimate * A paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association.
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